PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums RealBand WHAT is with this style??

Every time I open style picker this style is the first one on the list despite the fact that it doesn't exist. I know it doesn't exist because I removed it myself, as after listening to it I know I will NEVER use it. Not my style of music. Yet there it is.

It's called !byrddu3.sty. My Real Band seems to want to default to this style.



Note it says [NA] because it doesn't exist. So doesn't that make you want to ask, how can RB find a style that doesn't exist, list it, AND THEN tell me it doesn't exist?

In this example, the search criteria was funk. There's no reference at all to funk on that line or in that style.

Eddie,

I know Band-in-a-Box has a master styles reference list of all available PG Music styles. Since styles are not native to RealBand my assumption is that the utility program RealBand uses for Band-in-a-Box functions also uses the Master styles reference list.

Because the Master styles reference list includes all the extra and bonus styles the Stylepicker dialog will display N/A styles.

Think about all the questions you see in the forum from new users that purchase the Pro or Mega PAKs. The first question normally is, "Where are all the N/A styles?"

I would check my RealBand settings to see if the unwanted style has been inadvertently picked up in a setting.

Eddie.
i'm not getting this behaviour.
there are myriad ways of setting stylepicker to your liking includeing cliking on column headings and useing
the boxes at top includeing other box and searches to get it behaveing how you want includeing setting up favorites etc etc.
THEN once you have picker way you want eg favs just save the settings with your other rb settings as EDDIESFAVSTYLES.SEQ. ie a template idea.
then on starting a new song load up the eddie template seq with picker favs in ...and off you go.

would this not work for you.
bye bye birdy ? lol.

best
om

Muso, I am not and have never "set" style picker. I just click it and it opens. This has nothing to do with favorites. It opens as the "style currently being used" despite the fact that I have never and would never use that style.

This software gets buggier with every release and with the growth curve of PG the support is getting more and more diluted. The last issue I had could have been resolved in a 5 minute screen share but I had to endure a 75 email exchange, many of which made demands that were clearly just buying time to push the problem out into the next day. I have to screen dump and verify my build version FOUR TIMES! Is it even conceivable that I would roll BACK a version from the first report? I wish I hadn't deleted that mail thread.

Sadly, like everywhere else in this microwaved bottom-line driven world, customers seem to matter less and less. I am not even going to care about this problem as I know what I would be wading into. Days of insulting questions and multiple requests to "verify" things, all designed to kick the can down the road because they are swamped with help requests. Less people doing proportionately more work.

The thing is that it is intermittent. About half the time when I go to style picker the software freezes when I leave and I have to close through task manager. And then deal with the annoying "Real Band crashed last time. Should I start in safe mode?" thing. I don't want to ever have to go through and reset 129,265 parameters to get back to where I was!! No software in the world acts in a way where crashing would require resetting things to vanilla. Maybe rather fix the bugs to avoid crashes than ask me to reset after crashes? That confirmation box is saying "We know we are going to crash so we built this in rather than test thoroughly and eliminate the crash points." Why, under ANY circumstance, would just going to the list of styles cause a lockup? Not even selecting one! Just going to that routine. If I bother to report this, I will be asked for screen shots of my Windows version, my computer information, how much RAM, what CPU...

Wife 3.0 once asked if Photoshop would work on her computer. When I came out of shock that she would ask such a STUPID question, I asked "Do you seriously think that Adobe makes "Photoshop for EVERY Windows computer in the world" and then a separate "Photoshop JUST for Jane's computer?"

This is how I feel about issues like this. The theory behind clean code writing is that the code executes EXACTLY the same on every computer running the same OS. And to drill down one level more, to run the same way every time it runs. Not work fine for 2 weeks and then suddenly, with NO changes to the OS, start crashing on handfuls of computers and when it seems to be in a bad mood. Man, you open the program, you enter chords, you pick a style, and you hit generate. The same steps every time can't result in who knows what will be a random result on a random cold Saturday in the Great Lakes area with snow flurries and no sunshine.

There are a handful of GUI problems too but I really don't need the heartburn and migraines to start explaining them to non-techies, only to be met with those same insulting tier 1 troubleshooting steps that are cut and pasted from scripts. Again, kicking the can down the road instead of sending it to the coders who can probably tell me in 87 seconds what needs to be done. It turns into a game of telephone, where person one tells the joke to person 2 and the joke gets passed around the table and when it gets back to the originator it is nothing like how it started. The more links in a chain, the weaker the chain. If it's "Fred" who knows the answer, tell "Fred to answer me, not pass it along to Mike who then tells Mary and Mary replies to me 3rd hand. It's like "If we give him a hard enough time, he will get frustrated and stop bothering us about his petty little problem." Help desks everywhere do that. This one didn't used to. I feel like we are customer numbers anymore and not people.

I once had to call the vet because after flea med application my dog was violently shaking his head as if he was trying to get something off of his back. She said she'd tell the vet. The vet called me immediately because the desk jockey said "The dog is shaking". The vet took that to mean convulsing. How did it get from "shaking his head" to just "shaking"? The telephone joke game! (He was allergic to the med.)

Very frustrating. I wanted to work on something tonight but if it is going to keep freezing just because I want to pick a style I won't bother. I don't need aggravation tonight. It's bad enough the weather was so bad today that I was held hostage in the house. Perfect day to work on music but the software is messing up so bad I just quit caring for today. Pretty good song in my head that may actually never make it to screen because I can't be bothered with constant restarting, desperation computer reboots when nothing else works, etc....

Eddie.
Yep i get it..ive had various probs over the years with various software/apps....

But in this instance i’m able to use rb without constant hassles.
Otherwise i would drop it.

my crits with rb are more with some functionality i would like...which ive mentioned in the past in the wishlist.
eg an expanded role for bars view....per pipelines great graphics.

best/happiness.
om

This version, when "Snap To Beat" is selected, wants to select one beat back of where I click the cursor. So at 4-1-0 of the measure before. Annoying when I have to stop, zoom way in, click one human hair thickness to the right side of the mark I want to hit, and then once the anchor is set, have to force the cursor WAY off the view so I can select the number of bars I am trying to cut or move. Never before did I have to do this. Just in 2022. And I know I am being accurate with my mouse placement because if I just click it manually I am on 1-1-0 of the measure 99% of the time. When I miss it is 1-1-2 at most, and that is at default view or when I am zoomed even tighter than default. With these 27 inch monitors I have a very clear view.

And they want screen shots of things that are moving operations rather than static. How can I send a screen shot of me clicking the mouse and seeing the reaction to that click? As I said in another rant, SCREEN SHARE! It takes 45 seconds to set up a Team Viewer session and a couple of minutes on Team Viewer will show visually what dozens of emails will possibly maybe kinda-sorta convey in words. But nope, too busy. Rather make me send email all day long, and often more than 1 day of it. As a long time IT help desk person, I was on remote desktop ALL DAY and 2 of us handled a 2000 user office. Such a great tool but nobody wants to use it.

IF it was me running the office, and that's never going to happen, I would bring on 2 young people who will work for almost nothing, drill them for a month about the software, and then sit them at a computer to do nothing BUT live help sessions via Team Viewer. With a userbase who works from their homes all over the world, this is quite different from an office where all the users are in one building. I actually made a point of taking 20 minutes in the morning and afternoon to walk to the floors so people could put a face with the name and voice.

As far as he GUI concerns, there may be things I can do to the GUI that I don't know about, but the helps are really lacking because they are dependent on prior knowledge. I have NO idea how a total green newbie makes heads or tails of those manuals. One thing I still don't understand logically is how they use the word "push". When you insert that caret, it doesn't "push". The word push implies forward. What the ^ does is PULL the music backward in time. When you push a door, you move it away from you. When you pull a door you move it toward you. So to use the ^, you are pulling that note back in time toward you. Yet it is called a push. That kind of semantical thing can be confusing to a newbie. So for me to sit down with help files I would have to know what THEY call something before I can look it up. And I miss books. I hate help FILES. I want a book. With a table of contents in front, not 245 pages back from where I am reading on a screen. Just flip the book. But that's a cheapness thing. One file cloned one per a million users vs one million copies of a book that had to be printed on paper that costs money. Just another reason why the world stinks due to global economics. Anybody who hasn't read The World Is Flat really should. Great view of how the global economy has changed with the evolution of the internet. Things you may not have thought about, like how you can go to the ER at 3am, have x-rays taken, and have results of those x-rays in 10 minutes because they send them to a time zone where it is business hours to have them read and the results are emailed back. Back to the time before call centers when call forwarding was put in, allowing east coast businesses 3 more hours of business time by forwarding calls to a west coast branch/store. Now order desks are open 20 to 24 hours a day. I have ordered stuff from Home Depot at 11pm. And picked it up the next morning at 8.

Eddie.
1. Traks view Re -1 beat back from cursor/snap grid.
Zoom in more on waveform now place cursor at bar start or beat whatever.
You can also specify in the edit dialogs to fine tune….also you can get audio edit up by clicking on waveform in trak view …
AND HERES ANOTHER IDEA…
2. BARS VIEW i use for copying/moveing whole bars around.
By dragging with mouse along / highlighting bits of trak.
So lets say i like a drum fill at bar 23 and i want same at bar 45 just hilite Bar 23 then copy to bar 45.

bars view is sometimes faster , depending on situation.

Hth
om

Muso thanks. Let me expand a little on what I don't like.

If I want to move bar 17 through 50. If I zoom in in order to be accurate when I start the select process, the right side of the screen is not visible beyond bar 24-ish. So I have to drag off the right edge of the grid and let the software catch up.

I would like to be able to click a box that says "copy" and put in manually 17-1-0 and 50-4-119 and have the grid light up dark blue like when I do it with the cursor. (I'd also like them to call the ticks 1 thru 120 and not 0 thru 119).

Yes, I know I could use cut and paste rather than drag. But that is more rolling and clicking and I want to streamline, not complicate.

Is there NOW a way to do what I described? Click something to initiate a manual entry to/from and then give me a pulldown with options to copy, cut or move?

It all comes down to cursor control, really. I am very accurate with the mouse but unless I am zoomed way in it reverts to beat 4 of the previous measure.

What I would REALLY love is to set all the things this software can do that I use and make that "Eddie's way" and save that as the default when I launch the software. There are dozens of buttons on this GUI that I don't use and in fact don't even know what they do. That whole running debate about the ACW... I tried it once and it didn't even get close, so I never went back. I have near perfect pitch and I can hear what the chords are. (That's why I can chart fast.) I can feel what a move from 1 to 6 minor sounds like. (Most people here can. I'm not special.) I rarely use MIDI because after the program generates MIDI tracks I convert them to audio anyway, and it converts them at such low levels I end up having to gain change every one of them. Again... streamline. not create more clicks. I have asked at least times why those tracks are so quiet and nobody can tell me. Real Track generation in general is WAY too varied. You can generate 10 tracks and they will be at 10 different levels. Can they not be standardized to generate at -6db, or -3db? Any useable level. The drums, wow. After generating I immediately have to go select the drum track, go to gain change, and boost them at least 12db. I understand mixing, but I should not have to change the gain stage of tracks, just the mix level. Personally I HATE stereo tracks. If the drums have a left and right, generate 2 mono tracks and let ME pan them. Yes, I can go to tracks and split them into 2 mono tracks, but back to the same thing. Why should I have to? My default new track type is mono audio. Yet on random tracks, and with no notice, RB creates stereo tracks. (I actually wish the drums came out individually rather than compiled. We've discussed that. I want a kick track, a snare track, a hi hat track, etc...)

But that's a perfect world scenario that I'd have complete control of my software.

Eddie.
There is a drag move feature , using ctrl key…but to move oodles of bars i prefer to use bars view.
lets say you had a huge number of bars i would use bars view to do a divide n conquer. Eg lets say 80 bars to move i would prolly do two 40 bar chunks using bars view. Or 4 20 bar chunks.

Frankly if i need to do very “hairy” advanced deep deep editing moves and oodles of moving huge amounts of traks parts around i would export the trak(s) into reaper whereby its a uber doddle to move chunks around.


Hth
om

I use the drag every song. The issue with drag is it starts with locating the cursor, which it doesn't do well without zooming way in, and then, well, I mentioned that before. It's a 6 or half dozen thing.

If you want to specify the selected area for edits, the From/Thru is a handy thing to pay attention to.
It is displayed in various processes, but easy to skip past .. that is IF you know the numbers for the section you want.
You can access it by double clicking in the From-Thru area, or in many of the edit options.
A couple of these images show how fine these 'click' resolutions can be set (most users use the default 120, but it can be as fine as 3840).
Not sure if this helps, but maybe (?)

A point to note, over the years ive developed various methods re song development.
One aspect is i try and pre-empt ‘hairy’ deep edits or moving huge numbers of song bars around later on in a songs development either in bb/rb or reaps by concentrating
on the chord arrange in bb or rb’s chord sheet. I put a lot of effort in getting chord view the way i want. Then i might mix to a stereo wav , and import the wav back into rb for
detailed vocal tests etc etc. still at this stage assessing how well the arrangement of the chords works.

This way in rb for example i rarely have to do lots of editing in rb traks view or audio edit view etc etc, and/or for example having to move 40 bars to a different place.
I would typically do such moves testing out different chord arrangements in chords view originally when i was developing the song concept..ie using chords sheet view.

Typically “then” its just using bars view later on when the final vocs are done might i
do stuff like say…copy a drum fill from bar 24 to bar 56 cos i liked the bar 24 better
Or say i like a violin rt for 4 bars from bar 65 to another 4 bars elsewhere...ie just useing bars view for little song touch ups.

In summary i rarely get into the need for deep hairy edits….and moving huge amounts
Of traks around.

Eddie, one nice thing bout bars view is you can, if you wish sweep/hilite multiple traks...
For moving/copying etc etc/whatever . but maybe you already know such.
Bars view i find very useful compared to using other edit methods in rb. saves a lot of mousing.

Best
om